Posted 24 August 2014

PlayStation Network is back online (update)

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UPDATE:The PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network are back online and people can now enjoy the services on their PlayStation devices.

The networks were taken offline due to a distributed denial of service attack. We have seen no evidence of any intrusion to the network and no evidence of any unauthorised access to users’ personal information.

In light of today’s issue, the networks will not undergo the regularly scheduled maintenance, which was planned for Monday, 25th August. We will provide an update shortly for when the maintenance will be rescheduled.

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused by this issue. Thanks for your patience and support.

ORIGINAL POST: Like other major networks around the world, the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have been impacted by an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic.

Although this has impacted your ability to access our network and enjoy our services, no personal information has been accessed.

We will continue to work towards fixing this issue and hope to have our services up and running as soon as possible.

The worst thing about this is that it had to happen on the weekend and the bank holiday. :( I got lucky and managed to get on twice earlier by luck but took a lot of time and work. Never had the luck again since. :(

Please grow up, for the most part Ddos attacks are unavoidable. You should thank the “people”, and I use that term loosely, that went out of their way to try and take PSN offline for a while. I wonder what they’ll give you!?

A DDOS attack my be unavoidable by Sony, but the fact remains customers are paying for a service which Sony did not provide, I don’t think people should be expecting gifts etc but Sony in good faith should just add an extra days subscription onto peoples plus accounts to keep everyone happy.

Yeah it was annoying as hell as I had set up a boosting time for air conflict but I just played jojo all star battle.there has got to be a better way tho like making the network separate from the rest of sony

UPDATE: The PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network are back online and people can now enjoy the services on their PlayStation devices. The networks were taken offline due to a distributed denial of service attack. We have seen no evidence of any intrusion to the network and no evidence of any unauthorized access to users’ personal information.

In light of today’s issue, the networks will not undergo the regularly scheduled maintenance, which was planned for Monday, August 25. We will provide an update shortly for when the maintenance will be rescheduled.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by this issue. Thanks for your patience and support.

It is impossible to protect from a DDoS attack. You seriously need to think through your over-entitled gamer stance. Lots of other companies were hit on the same day.I’m just glad Sony managed to get it sorted out on a Sunday. Good stuff.

While I understand that DDOS-attack can occur and that online gaming is disrupted, there is one thing that really annoyed me.

Due to the attack, I was “locked out” of my games I purchased on PSN as the license validation could not occur. I am sure this has occured for many others. Really hope this can be looked into for future downtime/maintenance or attack.

This tip from GamesReviews may have helped “Select network when you get into your settings menu, then remove the tick from the box that says “connect to the internet.” It’s as simple as that. Forcing your console to not even try to connect will give you access to your unavailable single player games, and remove that pesky black screen. “

to lizard squad (I know you will read the blog) why don’t you do something useful as you clearly have some skills like target I.S in Iraq, snoop around north Korea or something that would actually help people who are persecuted/killed on a daily basis

Ahhhh FINALLY i can sign in to the PS Blog lol, Thank you to all the Sony team for their hard work during the DDoS attack. @Fred Dutton please ignore my twitter message it doesn’t matter any more lol :D

What annoys me the most: you can not view trophies off line on a ps4. Whise stupid idea was that? Seriously? With the amount of maintance you lot do there should be an option to view them offline. Fool of a took

Ps4 is a new console. Back when Ps3 was released there wherent even trophies and they added alot of features to Ps3. So be patient they will add more features to Ps4 it will just take some time and alot of coding

Nothing to apologise for, Fred. If I had to put in extra hours on a Sunday because some miserable dweebs decided to make my job more difficult, I would be extremely annoyed, to say the least. Thanks for your hard work on getting things up and running again and thanks for keeping us in the loop.

Im happy about this attack because now Sony realize i hope, how easy the psn servers overload after for example the number of friend list increase, the ps3 the list is broken some ids not loading and some other i dont see the trophies, on ps vita and ps4 loading very slow. dont know if this problem has to do with servers please guys correct me if im wrong but i know you guys have the same problem especially if the friend is more than 100 . By the way the last update on psn store on ps3 do the store faster that is nice :) I report not only the bad things but also the good to be fair :)

It is likely at the risk department of Sony. How much money does it cost to prevent such an attack? How many people are capable for attacking, and how many of those persons will attack Sony? Does anyone knows that? I understand that is happens everywhere. I don’t blame Sony. The attackers did it because they they find that Sony isn’t spending enough money on the security of the servers.At the end of the line, we all can enjoy PSN again. Happy hunting!

People must be bored to DDoS a network like sony like don’t you people have better things to do and disrupt gamers from accessing the PSN store or playing multiplayer. if you want to get your e-peen bigger why don’t you DDoS the government or something

another one who can’t read? they did no such thing. that status update was from last week when there were indeed ISP issues but PSN itself was fine. it was dated 15th august, can’t people read? Yesterday was not 15th August.

Thankfully it never affected me, I was online on FFXIV: ARR the whole damn time, feel sorry for the people it affected but (CENSORED) happens, good thing us Sony peeps understand these types of things and don’t go all Fanboy crazy.

Considering that, according to news reports, these idiots were allegedly also responsible for the bomb hoax that grounded the President of Sony Online Entertainment’s flight from Dallas to San Diego, I think that a horde of angry gamers will shortly be the last of their worries. Security services tend to be a little sensitive about such things these days.

One thing Fred – you mentioned that the planned maintenance for today has been cancelled. Can you advise us why maintenance was even planned for today in the first place? A bank holiday is the last day in the calendar that you’d ever want to run maintenance. I’m aware it’s unique to certain countries, but wouldn’t it make more sense to schedule it for a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday instead, when people are less likely to be online?

Service is done in the US and they only have 1 calendar.The fact a network needs to go down for maintenance show this network is unprofessionally designed. Do you know any other company or bank (amazon, ITunes, etc) that shuts down for a day for maintenance? Me neither.

Guys, please make the PS4 OS more resilient to network problems. Currently, the whole console becomes a mess of instability and hangs if it there is some sort of network issue and the best solution is physically pulling the network connection.

SCEE, why don’t you use the “From PlayStation” news tool on PS4 and the news ticker on PS3 to announce network changes? Seriously, the tools are already there for you, and these will reach far more people than the 10% of PS users who read the blog.

i + some friends needed to reinstal fuly ore ps4 jesterday !i warnt consumer service tings were not corect like store + mesage system ( +- just before destiny beta )yesterday = new problem = when you put ps4 on you need to pick player you are = buth never past tat screenso ful reinstal = only option ( very sad = the last of us + -50 gb redownloading nowh )

buth today i canseld destiny guardian editionwhy = when you do maintenace ore are ofline by eni reason lots of mi games i buy tru psn are locktps4 can not controle license !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so very please put license of sp modus on the hd of the owner instead of on psn servers .as long you company do not understend + do somting about ith = 0 big psn titels i wil buy / download from you store .

also you are not gulty if some low life peopel are criminelsbut sony company need to1 – make lots of inprovemt on security2-make digital games cheaper3-make the sp modus so we can always play even if u ar...

i + some friends needed to reinstal fuly ore ps4 jesterday !i warnt consumer service tings were not corect like store + mesage system ( +- just before destiny beta )yesterday = new problem = when you put ps4 on you need to pick player you are = buth never past tat screenso ful reinstal = only option ( very sad = the last of us + -50 gb redownloading nowh )

buth today i canseld destiny guardian editionwhy = when you do maintenace ore are ofline by eni reason lots of mi games i buy tru psn are locktps4 can not controle license !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so very please put license of sp modus on the hd of the owner instead of on psn servers .as long you company do not understend + do somting about ith = 0 big psn titels i wil buy / download from you store .

also you are not gulty if some low life peopel are criminelsbut sony company need to1 – make lots of inprovemt on security2-make digital games cheaper3-make the sp modus so we can always play even if u are ofline by eni reason

list of games i buy + was not abel to play-the last of us-zen pibal 2 on ps4 ( vita no problem ) = i own every tabel-sparkle 2-warframe = i own lots of ingame content-rogue legacy on ps4 ( vita no problem )

i do not now mi ps4 fuly freezed by you problems ( but i tink = you need to investigate )ps4 day one 1tb ( hope freezes noting to do whith unstabel patch = them not compatibel whith bigger hd formats )buth = totaly not hapy i needed to fuly reboot = +- 6 hr + reinstal al games todayluky i have nowh no limit on download like in past .

Dear Sony, the fact PSN needs to go down for maintenance shows that PSN is a poorly designed network.Now there was a DDoS attract (as happens to almost al big companies) and it crippled your network for a day. That is unacceptable! I worked at a bank and we got hit almost every other weekend (super computers at universities are mostly abused for this purpose) and non of our customers got as much as a small hiccup that made them retry to log in but that was it. Sure it costs money, qualified personal and monitoring 24/7/365 but there is no need this had to happen.Now we pay for this service I expect to be compensated for the discomfort and hope you will take this matter seriously as this console business is more and more relying on connectivity.I don’t endorse what this group did, attacking the network and tweeting a thread, they are criminals and need to be punished accordingly. But Sony should also take responsibility.

Actually in the UK certain banks were unavailable after a hiccup (this happened a few years ago).

Also stating a network doesn’t need maintenance is a bit silly…all networks need maintenance. It’s like buying a car then wondering why it doesn’t run any more because you forget to put petrol and oil into it. Everything needs maintenance lawns, parks, buildings, pets, cars, people and especially networks. Networks need to be updated, mostly to fix any possible back door intrusions that are susceptible to being hacked. I’m not a hacker, but I have known a few and you can’t just put up a network and think it won’t be hacked. Hackers hack because they can and when they can’t they keep trying until they can…the bigger the challenge the bigger the desire to overcome it. A DDoS is not a hack though its simply flooding requests for a page or server until it overloads and gets taken down. This is often achieved by zombified or bots on computers of unsuspecting people. For all you know your pc ...

Actually in the UK certain banks were unavailable after a hiccup (this happened a few years ago).

Also stating a network doesn’t need maintenance is a bit silly…all networks need maintenance. It’s like buying a car then wondering why it doesn’t run any more because you forget to put petrol and oil into it. Everything needs maintenance lawns, parks, buildings, pets, cars, people and especially networks. Networks need to be updated, mostly to fix any possible back door intrusions that are susceptible to being hacked. I’m not a hacker, but I have known a few and you can’t just put up a network and think it won’t be hacked. Hackers hack because they can and when they can’t they keep trying until they can…the bigger the challenge the bigger the desire to overcome it. A DDoS is not a hack though its simply flooding requests for a page or server until it overloads and gets taken down. This is often achieved by zombified or bots on computers of unsuspecting people. For all you know your pc could have helped contribute to it.

I think Sony learned back in 2011 that bubble gum and rubber bands aren’t sufficient enough to keep a network or server from being hacked, may suffice for tacking on trophies but not much else. Going offline for a day, holiday or not is better than what the alternative was in 2011. You can hardly blame Sony for taking a militant approach by making PSN unavailable.

If you still want compensation, like I said I threw 11p in the street, come get it its yours

Well looks like here in Portugal they are going with the maintenance. I just got log off from the PSN and now when i try to log in it says that they are “undergoing essential maintenance”!! What the hell is going on Sony???!!!!! -_-

The worst part of this isn’t the loss of service on Sunday but the fact that Sony intended to once again take the network down for totally unannounced “scheduled maintenance” for an entire bank holiday.

Can we please review the maintenance policy so that first of all we get some sort of warning that maintenance is planned and secondly that it isn’t always during European peak time or UK bank holidays? Its simply ludicrous that after eight years the *only* times that America has suffered a loss of service during their peak hours is during DDOS attacks whereas Europe is constantly taken offline intentionally without as much as an FYI. Get it sorted.

People getting upset about a DDoS attack, is well insane. This kind of thing happens all the time on the internet and not just to corporations or online retailers…sometimes it happens to personal websites as well.

For a start kudos to Sony for coming forward and being honest, they obviously learned something back in 2011…when PSN was down for a month in both the US and Europe and even longer in Japan. I remember this well as I actually commented the day before the service went down asking what was going on because it was constant being signed out of PSN and Geonet (White Knight Chronicles) at least 30 disconnects that day.

I also remember people not even being able to sign onto the blog and post…some of us were able to the first few days and then it was silence. Finding out our personal details were stolen was upsetting and yes after the network returned some felt that bit of paranoia creeping in every time PSN became unavailable thinking please not again.

People getting upset about a DDoS attack, is well insane. This kind of thing happens all the time on the internet and not just to corporations or online retailers…sometimes it happens to personal websites as well.

For a start kudos to Sony for coming forward and being honest, they obviously learned something back in 2011…when PSN was down for a month in both the US and Europe and even longer in Japan. I remember this well as I actually commented the day before the service went down asking what was going on because it was constant being signed out of PSN and Geonet (White Knight Chronicles) at least 30 disconnects that day.

I also remember people not even being able to sign onto the blog and post…some of us were able to the first few days and then it was silence. Finding out our personal details were stolen was upsetting and yes after the network returned some felt that bit of paranoia creeping in every time PSN became unavailable thinking please not again.

Demanding compensation is a bit beyond the pale though. I’m not a Sony fan girl, I’m a game head with multiple consoles and handhelds…so please can we keep this into perspective. People moaning about not being able to download games…I have a 320 gb PS3 (298 once you consider the part that Sony corrals for its updates) and I have around 10gb free, around 20gb on vita of a 64gb card and buckoo amount on my PS4 and then there are 200+ disc games I have. PSN could go down for a year and I’d still be spoilt for choice. I can’t be the only person on PSN who has multiple games on their hd.

As someone mentioned before that breaking down the cost of a £39.99 plus membership equates to 11p a day. Well I just threw 11p out the window into the street you are more than welcome to come and get it…somehow I bet when I check tomorrow it will still be there…btw if you need a clue its 11 1p coins so have fun

So a Ddos is enough for sony to reschedule maintenance for us Brits, other EU players that are annoyed at ‘peak time’ disruption, that is nice to know…Though not affected or bothered by the affects of attack, if you want to put a 11pence price on not being able to access ‘whatever’ then imo you need to reconsider, sure the guy who says he got inconvenienced is most likely exaggerating, but thats no excuse for doing opposite, 11pence for cost of service, price for not being in your ‘most wanted’ game, ? anyone? And why, just why do they tell us to contact our isp’s, when they know it’s not the problem?.. that being a ongoing pet hate of mine, the app’s there already, wish it was put to use.

Though i wish that were true, i have no clue as to the infrastructure of psn, it can’t be along the lines of other online retailers as it just offers more than the shop, so until i can wrap my head around the cost, both monetary to sony and possible more awkward use of service for all of us, i just don’t know.. is it right that avoiding this is either as easy as some believe, ie throw more money and specialist at it, or is the whole network just built wrong for such fixes, meaning sony would need to reconstruct the psn model at at probable great, mind bending price. Still it should not be ‘our’ problem, and a brand new psn structure may be a very good long term investment that could pay for itself one day.. There Are a lot of smaller improvements they really should be making, like using the console’s/webstores top banner to keep us better informed, even if they need to legally be sure before making it public, surely a message of say, ‘there is a possible outside problem’, anything e...

Though i wish that were true, i have no clue as to the infrastructure of psn, it can’t be along the lines of other online retailers as it just offers more than the shop, so until i can wrap my head around the cost, both monetary to sony and possible more awkward use of service for all of us, i just don’t know.. is it right that avoiding this is either as easy as some believe, ie throw more money and specialist at it, or is the whole network just built wrong for such fixes, meaning sony would need to reconstruct the psn model at at probable great, mind bending price. Still it should not be ‘our’ problem, and a brand new psn structure may be a very good long term investment that could pay for itself one day.. There Are a lot of smaller improvements they really should be making, like using the console’s/webstores top banner to keep us better informed, even if they need to legally be sure before making it public, surely a message of say, ‘there is a possible outside problem’, anything except the present system that has some people reseting routers or even phoning the isp as advised to, thats just bad business, imo.

Hi there. Don’t know if I’ve missed something but I’m unable to use a wallet top-up card in the PS store. It acknowledges the sum of £20 but then I get an error message.I’ve tried it on the PS3, PS4 and by accessing the store through the PS app on my tablet.Same outcome. Is it the network or am I having a repeated ‘DOH’ moment? :)